Working from the oral history in The Five Year Mission: The next 25 years, this is a fascinating deep dive that answers the question “How did a recycled cover of a 1998 song written for Rod Stewart, ‘Where My Heart Will Take Me’ aka ‘Faith of the Heart’ become the title music for Enterprise?”
Also, after resisting melodic scoring in all the 90s shows, it turns out this was the music Rick Berman liked?!!
“…I, for one, can tell you that I thought it was a great opening and I’m not alone in that. I don’t think I’m in the majority, but I’m not alone."
And it seems the song does have its own subniche of supporters who share Berman’s view. (But not I.)
Anyone have good insights on the downfall of TNG-era Trek?
With Enterprise and Nemesis, it feels to me like the kind of situation where all the good people left and the person in charge (or Berman) didn’t know how much their success was because of the good people.
And so they run with their ideas, thinking they’re good and indifferent to the pushback from their underlings.
Is that what happened?
EDIT: So my vague guess as to what would have constituted “all the good people left” would have been Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor (and maybe Ronald D Moore counts too?) leaving. I just checked, and it seems by about Voyager S3/4, they’d both more or less left Trek, and, by the time Enterprise comes around, I’m guessing it was just Berman and Braga who’d stuck around, and, I’d also guess they really didn’t have much of a role in giving (or understanding) the TNG era qualities that made it good.
Like, if you take the four series and the people who seemed to have driven their creation and writing (taken from wikipedia):
Berman, Piller, TaylorBerman, Piller, BehrBerman, Piller, Taylor,BragaBerman,Braga… it seems pretty clear Berman needed good creative minds around him, and Braga just wasn’t that person. Moreover, it really looks like it’s Piller and Taylor that defined TNG era Trek (or the good parts at least).
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Yep! He’s also probably the clearest “black sheep” of all the major show runners or writers. Like Voyager and Enterprise do not happen the way they did if he’s got an influence.
I’m sure it pisses Berman off to hear about all the fans of DS9 given that it’s probably the one he had the least influence over (compared to Voyager and Enterprise at least)
Two words Rick Berman
After Roddenberry and his wife passed there was no one to reinforce the ideals that drove Trek.
DS9 was arguably anti-Trek, or at least seriously questioned the idea of the Federation as a force for only good in the realpolitik of the Alpha Quadrant.
I feel like the problem with Voyager and Enterprise was more that the writing wasn’t as good.
To be totally fair, they were being produced during the writer’s strike.